Videography in tourism research: An analytical review

Videography is a research approach that has been used extensively in consumer research and anthropology, yet has been considered less often in tourism research. This is surprising as tourism is inextricably linked to visuals. Many tourism features also fully justify the use of films to disseminate and share research findings within the tourism community, as the variety of contexts and their multisensorial dimensions can be best represented audio-visually. This paper reviews the existing work on videography, including its epistemology, ontology, and axiology. We then provide an analytical review of 28 films connected to tourism and travel themes. We describe and analyze them using five criteria: topicality, technicality (in collecting and in editing material), theoreticality, and theatricality. We conclude with contributions related to ontology, epistemology, and axiology and recommendations on how, when and why to use this innovative research format.